on Chosen Family/on Happiness/on Love/on Queerness

a light in my darkness

Posted on
a light in my darkness

cw: this post contains spicy language, including descriptions of physical and energetic intimacy.

you are and always have been
a light in my darkness.
if the journey was long,
if our hearts were breaking,
if love was all that’s left,
it is enough for me.
if you were ever my burden,
it’s because I wanted to carry you.

(selection from with an everlasting love which I wrote in May this year)

I have been part of a polycule, and then a chosen family, for the better part of the past ten years. I first met StarChild — my spouse — and then shortly thereafter I met their polycule, and in the years since we have lost loved ones and gained family members and eventually we chose to leave the country together in one tremendous effort that is still ongoing.

I believe it’s fairly typical for members of polycules to develop new relationships with one another when new people come into the group. It’s one reason that polycules can be messy as all hell. When Rose was pregnant with Robert, our six-year-old, Rob and Rose and I decided to be co-parents together, so we did the doctor and midwife appointments together as we could, and made plans for our new little one, and I drove us all to the hospital when Rose went into labor.

Earlier than that, when I was in and out and in and out again of the hospital with Alex during the worst of his mental health experiences before he turned eighteen, Rob was with me for almost every single visit. He would drive, he would put his name on the hospital paperwork alongside mine so I wasn’t the only person getting phone calls at 2am, he held me while I sobbed on the floor in hopelessness so very many times. He showed up in all the ways that he was capable of, to help me, to help Alex.

When I started having multiple court dates and CPS calls related to my second youngest, Sam, Rob accompanied me yet again; to the court in the early mornings, sitting with me while I replied to emails from my attorney, holding me while I sobbed and screamed. He was there when I saw Sam for the last time before I left the states. He knows the deep pain I carry because he’s looked in my eyes while it happened and watched me tuck it away for later because I could no longer manage to feel it.

we are both Leo sun signs, both strong in our convictions that we are correct, both deeply committed to showing up as who we say we are.

Ever since before we all left the states, Rob has been doing magical work to ease the way for us to get where we all have chosen to go. And because he would never falter, it has taken everything he had to give and more. Now that we are less held down by things in the states that needed dealing with, there is more room for him metaphorically to breathe, but it does not change the fact that he has been near death for months now.

When I wrote with an everlasting love, that was my own working of putting words to the reality that I have grieved much already and that while I am not ready to lose him, I can see a little beyond the grief to the place where there is love and joy and forever-ness.

I came back to Australia in early September. I was so fucking grateful to see Vincent again finally, and Ash, and StarChild, and Robert, and Rob. I felt almost frantic with the worry that I’ve been carrying for so long, hoping and hoping that he would stay alive, stay with us, please stay with us a while longer. I didn’t know what I could do to help him remain, but I wanted to try. I needed to.

a woogity explainer of sorts:

People like those I surround myself with are often not really human. We have regular looking human shaped meatsuits that we inhabit, and for all intents and purposes we function as human, mostly. But part of knowing ourselves (for those of us who are also studying in the Path of Light tradition) is understanding all the pieces of who we are, and if we are non-human, that is a thing to be aware of and to learn about. If I have power and am learning to use it, then I need to know its shape, its flavor, its strengths, its weaknesses, so that I can follow my oaths and my will to the best of my ability.

Rob (and here the name and the pronouns are like a wallpaper of descriptors that serve as signposts for people who just need to know who I’m talking about; because Rob is not necessarily the correct name and he/him are not the correct pronouns, although I have permission to use them like this) is non-human. I am non-human; Rose and StarChild and likely some of my kids are non-human. We acknowledge this about one another and we do our best to learn to be the best version of ourselves that we can, no matter what that looks like.

Rob is fae. Rob is specifically a fae person who needs to take in energy to sustain the body from outside the body itself. People like this who are not disciplined and not willing to control themselves could be easily described as energy vampires; people like this who are disciplined and willing to control themselves have to spend a lot of time finding consensual ways of sharing in the energy of others, in order to stay alive.

I have known for some time that Rob needs this, and it has been painful to see him merely surviving each day, always cold, always hungry, always one moment of too much effort away from a fainting spell.

It’s like knowing he needed a kidney transplant but also knowing that my blood type hasn’t matched in the past, and why would my blood type change?

so I did what I could: I stayed close to him as much as I was able to.

I sat by him on the couch. I would check in with him as he sat on his bed throughout the day, making sure he had water, tea, food, snacks, company, whatever it was that might help in that moment. I wanted to do the thing I’ve trained for as a death doula. I wanted to help provide the support for him to have a good death, a good death of his choosing.

It started with a few moments of closeness as we sat together that seemed suddenly more intimate. He leaned over and asked if he could whisper in my ear, it’s difficult for the intrusive thoughts to take over when my feet are tucked under your cock. (I am not human; I am trans, physically; and I am something closer to male than female, energetically) This made me laugh, and the feeling of being seen and understood by someone who will always respect my boundaries was beautiful and I wanted more of it. Waves of energetic effervescence seemed to rise in bubbles around us from any places we touched.

Once while we sat next to one another I reached up to rub the back of his neck, smoothing his hair out of the way, and then as I brushed his ear by accident, gently, I remembered how sensitive and private his ears are. But the way his breathing changed while he let me continue to touch his neck and hair was, I can’t lie, extremely wonderful. Another time, I fell asleep against him and while I was mostly conscious, I took his left arm that was gently around me and pulled it close to myself. If I could just stay like this. If everything could be okay, just for these moments, let me have this.

and then, it shifted

Rob invited me to attend a convention a few weekends back, with the full understanding that if I decided to go, I would set the pace. If I didn’t like it, if I wanted to leave, if I wanted to play, if I wanted to watch, if I wanted to do anything at all, it was my call to make for the both of us. It was a kink festival, and what he wanted to attend was the expo during the day; there would be acts on different stages, and lots of vendors, indoor and outdoor space, and plenty to do in the city as well when we weren’t at the festival. Then there was the after-party, when the vendor tables would be cleared away and the music would be louder and deeper, and there would be play parties happening in the dark throughout the place.

I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I was honestly kind of scared because what if I didn’t like it. What if all the things I was now feeling and thinking ended up being things I didn’t want to do? But I wanted to go. I wanted to try it out; the worst that could happen was that I didn’t like it, and nobody was going to shame me about how I felt about any of it one way or the other.

We sat down and talked to StarChild beforehand, to give them as much context as we could, and to make sure that they understood that this was partly for me and equally for Rob, because Rob could pick up the ambient energy and use it to replenish his own. And I wanted them to understand that Rob had been getting a trickle of energy from me already, because somehow and somewhere along the way, our energies have become very compatible. Rose was already aware, because Rob communicates with her all the time anyway, and I’m damn fortunate to have a co-parent + life partner who is so beautifully happy for me to be experiencing something this meaningful.

There was a long day of driving on Friday and eventually we made it to the Melbourne suburb where we stayed for the weekend. I barely recall what we had for dinner or if we had any, but what I do remember with my physical and energetic memory is the feeling of just sitting together, just holding each other, just slowly and carefully tracing lines across one another’s arms. Melting a little at a time into puddles. I turned my body into his and put my face in the warm curve of his neck after I told him, I’m in trouble, because you’ve started to smell good. I sniffed his skin and he gasped. I pushed my nose in and inhaled, then I carefully licked, and then I briefly lost my shit and bit him.

It’s an ebb and flow, you know? It goes back and forth. It gives and takes, it pushes and pulls. It’s a dance and a weaving-together. It’s the way a sine wave traces itself in sound. I have perfect pitch; I can see music, usually Beethoven. It’s a brief moment of clarity and mutual belonging. It’s the doing and it’s the time for breaths in between.

I made up my mind and asked how he felt about kissing. This was going to do me in if he said he enjoyed kissing. It would be even worse (better) if he was good at it. There are only two people in the world that I have kissed that I think can almost match me; one of them, I am married to. The other one is Rob.

We slept in separate beds that night because I wasn’t ready to do anything else. On the following day, we grinned at each other a lot as we had breakfast and coffee and got ready to go. We held hands and didn’t stop holding and touching each other. I bought a vibrator at a booth full of colorful toys. We walked outside and saw a really fun skit, then we bought a spiky rotary toy that sent sparkles across my skin when I rolled it up my arm. Later, we went shopping around downtown to find me something to wear for the afterparty, because it has been years since I had clothes that made me feel exactly as desirable and confident as I wanted to. Rob’s jaw is still on the floor in the shop where I found a pair of corset-waisted jeans and a tight button-up vest that both shows off cleavage and downplays it, which is perfect for a nonbinary person like me.

It was dark and loud when we got there and there were several play scenes already happening. The bass was vibrating through the floor and the air and so many queer people dressed up in all the ways they wanted to be were there, just being there with each other, or watching, or laughing and talking. It was profoundly beautiful. And Rob and I just wrapped around each other and rocked back and forth in time to the music and after a little while I needed to sit down because the energy was pretty heady. We found a short stairway in the corner of the hallway outside the main room and then we stayed there for hours, completely losing track of time, holding and kissing and touching and reaching and asking and taking and ebbing and flowing together. I took off my glasses and I could only see his face, or his neck, or his arms, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

After the party started to shut down, we went back to where we were staying and I’m not sure how late we were up that night but I don’t think I checked the time. We slept in the same bed. And I woke up feeling so warm and good and happy and whole.

it’s been twelve days

I’m someone’s boyfriend now. I’m boyfriend-shaped. And my girlfriend (god I love queering language in this queer relationship) is feeling healthier. He’s even generating his own body heat most of the time. THIS IS AN EXTREMELY BIG DEAL!!!!!!!

I can’t single-handedly give him all the energy he needs, but what I can give him, I will do so willingly. I’ve already said, what I give you is yours, no strings attached. I will learn to balance my own energy and take plenty of rest so that I can replenish myself, and I will have mind-blowing sex as often as we like which will have a delicious side-effect of giving him some life-affirming energy. I am willing to learn to take better care of myself if it means that my friend, my co-parent, my lover, my girlfriend, my beloved, can live for longer.

I’ve never written anything like this for you before. I’ve never shared anything this intimate without using as many metaphors as possible, and I wanted to write this because I can’t keep it to myself. This new relationship and the way it’s come to be is one of the most affirming things that’s happened to me. It affirms my gender identity, my literal physical appearance, my energetic appearance, the ways that I give and take energetically when I am intimate with someone. May it last for years and decades.

xox,
Nix

featured image is a photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

a Traveling Dragon/on Chosen Family/on Generational Trauma/on Hope

three months later

Posted on
an overgrown paddock near sunset

It’s been a little more than three months since my last published post here.

But actually, let me go back further than that. It’s been 274 days since I boarded a plane in Detroit Metro Airport, less than an hour’s drive from where I lived at the time, and left the States. I connected to my overseas flight in Dallas and crossed the international date line and on January 2nd, the land that is called Australia held that plane as it landed safely.

I spent almost six out of the last nine months in Bangkok, and I am missing Thailand and the people and her weather and loud wildlife at 2am and the spirit house in our village.

And now, I am back here, in the southern hemisphere. Back in the place where I was born and grew up, it was just recently the Autumn Equinox and is getting on into pumpkin season. Here, it is deep into spring and will soon be summer. The waxing crescent moon in the night sky hangs like it is suspended, the light moving across it in a way I am still getting used to. The stars at night have been thrown generously across the dark; there are too many of them to see. (Looking at the sky with my old glasses prescription is part of the problem.) Everywhere is big here in the south of the country: the sky is big, the land is wide, the sunset colors spread out so far. Trees bigger than the ones I grew up around are everywhere in the farms this property is part of. Spiders and birds and bugs and cows and stray cats and snakes and dogs are always nearby.

(Not as many kangaroos out this way, though.)

Am I still on a very long vacation adventure? Yes. Am I taking measures to keep myself safe from fascism? Also yes. Will I go back to Bangkok? HELL YES.

I am waking up when my alarm goes off at 9am and rolling toward the camper window by my bed to pull open the curtain and wind open the pane of glass so the morning breeze can blow in while I lie there and let my brain try and put itself back together for the day as my morning meds soak into my bloodstream.

I gained enough muscle mass and reconditioned my body enough while I was in Thailand that I can participate in the family community the way I’ve wanted to. I can wash dishes, I can do laundry and hang it on the line, I can pick up the six-year-old boy so he can feel tall. I can move heavy things. I can walk around town or around the property and wear my boots so the snakes don’t chomp on me. And when my new glasses get here in a week or two, I can put on my prescription sunglasses and do some of the driving errands.

In short, this all feels rather new. And it feels like a respite, in the way that only the daily routine of family — coffee, breakfast, laundry, lunch, errands, laughter, dinner, tickle fights, bedtime, staying up late — can be a respite. And we worked hard for this bit of peace.

I have done so many hard and scary things this year.

I didn’t think that fleeing my death would be part of my life’s history. If anyone wanted to double check to make sure I wasn’t making shit up, all they would have to do is look at the things the woman who gave birth to me is still posting on social media. Look at the image she has as her profile image, which she put up shortly after October 7th 2023. It is not lost on me that the Nazis are in my living ancestral lineage. I do not take this shame as my own; it is not my responsibility to cleanse their sins. It is my responsibility to be a person who is not a fascist. It is my responsibility to be a good community member, a good family member, a respectful dweller of the land I’m on, conscious of what I choose to do, what I choose to say, how I treat those I know, and how I treat those that I don’t.

This year may yet bring me things I did not expect, to places I didn’t know I’d see, to choices I have known I will need to make.

I had a birthday last month and now I’m forty-seven but I feel like I really don’t know how old I am any more. Who is this person that I am? I am so familiar with myself and yet the circumstances I am in feel so unfamiliar, but they aren’t scary. I am not afraid. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a child in a family where there is no fear dogging your every step the way it was when I was last a child.

Maybe this is (for me) a new timeline, not because I’ve skipped over all the bad parts of another one to get to the good part, but because my family and I have done an extraordinary thing on our way to do more extraordinary things and the real trick here is that we all get to live.

I get to live.

I am queer, trans, pagan, neurodivergent, anti-fascist, and I get to stay alive a while longer yet.

a Traveling Dragon/Letters/on Decolonizing/on Generational Trauma/on Harm & Reciprocity/on Praxis/the Cycle of the Seasons

letters to my family: II

Posted on
graffiti on a concrete wall in multiple languages, in the colors of Palestine

I’m kind of in a mood today. is it the upcoming new moon in Cancer or is it an energetic Sabbat hangover?! ugh

dear family,

Two specific things are on my mind and one of them is a very old wound and the other one is a recently developed piece of angst. Let’s talk about the second one!!

I think y’all know how much I am enjoying the Thai BLs I watch in particular, although it’s possible that it’s not obvious that it is extra exciting and somewhat thrilling to be in Thailand–in Bangkok–which is the place they are filmed, where most of the actors live, and where there are fan events happening every week. I live in a constantly fluctuating state of the possibility of seeing one or a handful of them every time I leave the house. I don’t go to the bigger malls yet, but when I do I will be trying to go on days when there are fan events scheduled.

Recently I had a wonderful but brief solo vacation to Vietnam, which is less than two hours’ flight away from Bangkok, and right now some of my most favorite actors are literally in Vietnam and judging from the airport photos (I know, I KNOW), some of which they posted, it looks like they took the same airline and probably the same flight that I did. TWO WEEKS LATER THAN ME. AIEEEEEEEEEEE

I’ll be fine, I’m just having some ~* feelings *~ about it.

so the first thing, yeah? the old childhood wound? it’s about war.

Specifically, it is about being a teenager and having my conservative family of origin war- and fear-mongering constantly because the US was entering into what would be called the Gulf War. Jim 1technically my father, I don’t like giving him the title because it’s a sign of respect and I am being intentionally disrespectful would turn the volume up on talk radio so that he could hear it no matter what room he was in, and it scared me badly. I still trusted him to tell me things that were true, and everything he was afraid of and therefore angry or paranoid about, he passed that along to the rest of us. I grew up terrified of war. I thought for sure it would affect us in the ways that it actually does affect people who live in the SWANA region 2South West Asia North Africa of the world, but it doesn’t affect the contiguous US geographically and probably never will. I spent my teens and young adulthood afraid of something that would never happen to me personally, as if that fear was reasonable; meanwhile I was never told that this is an entirely reasonable fear for people my exact age in a different part of the world. I was never told that we–the war machine that is the US–were actively causing this harm to those people. I grew up thinking that I was a victim, not understanding yet that I was part of a legacy of victimizers.

And so now that the US has, once again as always, taken it upon itself to cause immense harm to people in Iraq, it is an awful reminder to me of the harm I once believed was justified. That others still believe is justified. And I don’t want to let the war machine of the United States off the hook by using a neutral pronoun, either. Many choices, some made by us in my generation, some made by people in different kinds of power, all of them made by someone with enough privilege to be afforded the luxury of a choice, have led us to this place and will continue to lead us to this place. We will always have blood on our hands and in our mouths.

I have started watching the news again. Because I cannot be unaware of what is happening, and even though the sound of his voice makes me want to scream, I have to hear from his own mouth what the orange deathmachine is saying, because even if it’s a speech someone else wrote, he is using his voice to communicate it. When atrocities are being done in my name, I should know which carefully phrased statements are being made about them.

*topic change screech* I haven’t seen a ghost yet

Listen, y’all know I love paranormal and metaphysical shit. You know that about me. So you’re probably not surprised that I’m disappointed that I have not seen (or heard) any ghosts in Thailand yet.

Maybe it’s because our rental house here is in a village and everyone is pretty close together, so if ghosts are making noise it’s probably blending into all the other noise. However, I am personally disappointed in my lack of woogity 3this is our family & friend group’s term for paranormal/metaphysical shit adventures so far. I will have to try harder to be in places where there might be ghosts. Except not in a dumbass kind of way.

a handful of things I’m extremely into right now:

Being in new places and experiencing new things has enriched my personal collection of things that bring me joy. Here are a few new ones:

snacks & convenience stores

One of my new favorite things to do is buying a handful (or an armful) of snacks at a convenience store–a 7-Eleven or a Circle K–and shove all of them into my bag except one, which I will open, and eat as I’m walking around. I did this with an ice cream sandwich while I was walking through the Old Quarter in Hanoi recently because 1) I needed a boost to my blood sugar so I could get where I was going, and 2) I needed a visible reason to be ignoring people who were eagerly trying to get customers for the roadside restaurant and bar tables. I had no idea that walking down an alley with an ice cream sandwich in my hot little hands, swinging my arms and dodging motorbikes and other people also walking, would be my new favorite thing, but it is.

I’ve finally learned that single serving snacks are not some kind of sick joke (I used to always buy the ‘family size’ bag of Doritos so that I could have Doritos for at least most of a week if I was careful), but in fact it’s a beautiful thing to be taking such enjoyment in the moment that you celebrate it by getting an armful of whatever looks yummy at that point in time, and then you eat all of it. Perfection.

layered tank tops

My personal style has always been very influenced by the clothes habits I had in the mid 90s to mid 2000s, which consisted of oversized plaid flannel shirts, baggy boyfriend jeans, low-rise cargo pants, stompy boots, layered tank tops, and band t-shirts over long sleeves. It has been decades of sadness where I could not find any of these clothing items any more because they were out of style, and even the secondhand shops didn’t have them any more. I accidentally rediscovered layering my tank tops while I was in Vietnam, because I kept sweating and sweating and in a haze of air conditioning after probably the second shower of the day, I put two thin tank tops on at once and suddenly remembered that I used to do this on purpose all the time.

Next up: find out if my constant search for baggy streetwear-style pants will be successful. I promise I will update you if I find something good.

ramen and eggs

I didn’t know that ramen actually TASTES GOOD. At least, it tastes good here, even though it’s packaged and not freshly made; Vincent taught me how to add a few things that make it even better, including but not limited to:

  • mixing some of the hot pasta water into the oil & spice packet mix
  • melting a slice of packaged cheese with the just-drained hot ramen noodles and spices
  • a generous squirt of other sauces (current favorite combo is gochujang sauce and some japanese mayo)
  • an egg, either overeasy or scrambled

SPEAKING OF EGGS, in Thailand there are so many beautiful and delicious eggs, and I’m eating so many eggs right now. I love eggs. I don’t love eggs in the United States because they have made me feel sick for decades now. I guess that’s a US problem because that doesn’t happen here. Go figure.

I love y’all. I miss y’all. how are you doing?

I want to hear all about it.

xox,
Nix

epilogue:

Welcome to the hell we’re living in
And the ending of the world, we’re witnessing
You can cry for help, no one’s listening
No, no one’s listening
Welcome to the hell we’re living in
And the overexposure’s sickening
You can cry for help, no one’s listening
No one’s listening, so listen in

Watch the stars walk the red carpet
Watch the cops shoot the wrong girl in her own apartment
Become a slave to the free market
Where you pick up the gun or become the target
Watch the downfall, watch the closing credits
It’s over, forget it
You know where it’s headed, straight to the gutter
Watch as the winter warms up like summer
Watch it all through your new smartphone
With a battery mined by a child in a war zone
Then pretend to be ignorant, watch the cognitive dissonance
Watch the court get stacked (Stacked), the bad guy win (Win)
Watch, ’cause you’re looking at the mess you’re in
This phone is a mirror, and I am just a reflection

–selection of lyrics from BRAINROT by grandson [watch the music video]

I want to say something here after these remarkably upsetting lyrics–it does feel like this right now for a lot of us. It feels like we’re constantly having to consume things even if we don’t want to. It feels like we are screaming and nobody hears us. It feels like when other people are screaming, nobody cares. It feels like the whole world is upset and at the same time like no one will do a damn thing. And I just want to say: if I care, and if you care, and if we are doing at least SOMETHING to undo this disease of harm and exploitation that we were all born into, we are going in a better direction.

If I care and I’m listening, and if you care and you’re listening, then how can we say nobody’s listening?

featured image is a photo by Ash Hayes on Unsplash

Footnotes

  • 1
    technically my father, I don’t like giving him the title because it’s a sign of respect and I am being intentionally disrespectful
  • 2
    South West Asia North Africa
  • 3
    this is our family & friend group’s term for paranormal/metaphysical shit